Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(124)

“Did you go with Tristan to the river?” Keira grabs the rubber ball her son has been bouncing against the refrigerator for the past ten minutes and arches an eyebrow at him when he tries nabbing it from the island.

“Nah.” He settles in across from her on the barstool with his leg bouncing against the footrest and takes the ball, running it along the granite surface between his hands. “He wanted to head to the Quarter. There’s a girl who works in the Riverwalk he’s been eye humping for a month.”

Keira wrinkles her nose. The visual is unwelcome and Ransom laughs at her expression. Tristan is Leann’s oldest son, just a year younger than her own and Keira remembers the day he was born; she remembers changing his diapers; he and Ransom muddy from the river just outside her small cottage in Nashville. She doesn’t want to know he’s even noticed girls, much less that he’s been eye humping one. “Please. I can’t know that.”

“Mom, come on. He’s almost fifteen.” He leans across the island, voice lowered behind his laughter. “I bet he even gets boners.”

“Okay, gross.” A shudder works up Keira’s shoulders and she turns back to the stove, waving off her son’s low laughter as he moves around the island.

“You know, I get boners too sometimes.” Keira squeezes her eyes shut, as though being temporarily blind will eradicate that disturbing image from her mind. It does not. But her son is insistent, amused by her reaction and his annoying laughter only deepens when Keira stirs the sautéing onions with her eyes still shut. He leans his chin on the top of her head and Keira can feel his shoulders shake. “Well, all the time.”

“You really want me to throw up, right?”

Another laugh and her son nudges her with his elbow. “Sorry. I’m just messing with you.” He backs out of her way, leans against the counter as Keira moves around the kitchen, checking the temperature in the oven, returning to the island to the cutting board and the head of lettuce still wet from the sink. She knows her son watches her, is suspicious about her activity. She only cooks when she’s nervous, when something weighs on her mind. Keira is certain that Ransom will soon ask what’s bothering her. He’ll know something is up when he catches on to what’s cooking in the oven. “You need some help?” he says, eyes in narrow slits.

“Cut the cucumbers.” Keira is content to move around him, to not meet her son’s eyes as she adds the rice to the mixture, as Ransom peels the skin from the vegetable with his head moving, gaze tracing every move she makes. Finally, he clears his throat, repeats the noise until Keira is forced to look at him. “What?”

The long knife is out of his hands and when he crosses his arms over that massive chest, Keira looks away from him, focuses on the bowl in her hand. He looks so much like his father. But her son is persistent, takes the bowl out of Keira’s grip. “What’s going on?”

“Why do you think something’s going on?”

He moves his chin toward the stove. “Asparagus risotto, double fudge brownies and…” he lifts the cover from the grill on top of the oven surface, “salmon steaks.” Ransom’s nostrils pinch as he inhales and he opens the stove, jerking up straight when he peeks inside. “Shit, Mom, you made baked mac-n-cheese. From scratch! What is it?”

Keira rushes to deflect the problem before it starts. The signs are there instantly—the swift movement of his nodding head, the gear up for the collection of thoughts that are likely mudding up his reason; the hard bite of his top teeth over his bottom lip. They caution his impending rage, the hurried bubble of that epic temper as it crests. Keira is in front of him, hand on the back of his neck, fingernails in the nape before he can get too worked up.

“I want you to calm down.”

“I’m good.” His answer is too automatic, but he does not fight her when she pulls on his arm, when she sits him back down on the barstool.

“Ransom.”

Eyes closed and he takes a breath, leans his elbow on the counter and Keira relaxes. “Just tell me, please.”

The words had rested on her tongue for years. She’d tasted them, moved them around her mouth like a bitter wine for as long as he’s been alive. But Keira had never found the courage to release them. Her boy looks at her now, desperate, worried and they leave her mouth, through her weak voice just to take that anxious fear from his expression.

“I’m ready to talk to you about your father.”

He sits up straight and instantly that fear is gone, replaced by the stupid, wide smile that is so similar to Kona’s. “Really?” Keira nods. “Why?” Ransom asks, some of that happiness dimming.

“He… he was at the Market today.” The timer on the oven sounds and Keira moves toward it, pulls out the baked macaroni to set it on a hot plate. Ransom follows, turns her by the shoulders before she can take off her oven mitts. He doesn’t speak; they’ve always shared this silent little language, a nod of his head that says “continue” and her quiet exhale that tells him she’ll explain. “He saw you.”

“Okay?”

“Sweetie, one look at you and he knew. He just knew.” There are four perfectly round freckles, faint, but dark under Ransom’s left eye. When he was younger, every month, he’d insisted that she count them, see if more had joined the others; it was a game to him. It broke Keira’s heart to play it. She runs her fingers over those spots now, trying to ignore the memory of Kona’s freckles, how she’d kissed every one. “You look so much like him.” Ransom takes her fingers, holds them away from his face, a silent request that she stop procrastinating.